by Alison Lyssa
AXIS: They’re scared of me and you together.
THEENIE: They don’t understand it.
AXIS: They can’t control it. Alabastar has to turn out perfect or their empire falls in ruins. You have to work out whose life you’re living. They’d force that child on you if they could split us up.
THEENIE: Don’t say that. If I’m not holding onto you, nothing’s real, nothing’s safe.
AXIS: I can’t be you. I want to finish the game.
THEENIE: I’ll go.
Out. Up and down
This cold haunted town.
Run out and play baddies
Rape girls and old ladies,
Make havoc; why can’t I?
I’m unnatural, aren’t I?
If men can’t have me, or my lover
They’ll build a court and damn me,
Morally unfit to be a mother.
AXIS: Don’t let politics leave you without a corner for yourself, or for me.
THEENIE: They’re going to sue me.
AXIS: Oh shit, Theenie. This was supposed to be our decadent weekend away. If it didn’t rain all the time in these painful mountains we could go out.
THEENIE: Alabastar doesn’t want to go bushwalking.
AXIS: Alabastar? Alabastar! He’s the only one enjoying this. Ice-creams at Echo Point, rides on the Scenic Railway.
‘Knock knock …
Who’s there?
Walter.
Walter who?
Wall to wall carpet …’
Chocolates at the Paragon Cafe and here, beside the log fire, in this stunning old camp hotel, Space Invaders.
Pinball machines.
You gotta smile. He’s winning enough free games to flog them off to the other kids. With a bit of luck he’ll get up to paying the hotel bill.
THEENIE: You don’t like him, do you?
AXIS: I don’t want to be torn to pieces. I’ll support you if you have to fight for him, but right now I’ve got to have some space for myself.
THEENIE: You want me to lose him. Go on, admit it, you want his father to get him.
AXIS: Don’t be crazy.
THEENIE: You wish he didn’t exist.
AXIS moves to leave.
THEENIE: Axis, where are you going? Where are you going?
AXIS: Out.
She leaves.
THEENIE: Let me come with you. [Calling] Alabastar!
Pause.
Axis! Wait! It’s raining. Please.
No answer.
Alabastar, get your raincoat. We’re going out to hug a gumtree.
She leaves. Blackout.
SCENE SIX
KURT and MIRIAM’s house. MIRIAM enters with a new baby wrapped in a shawl of purple, white and green, the suffragette colours.
MIRIAM: [singing] I have a dolly
With eyes of blue
And hair that’s curly brown.
She wakes whenever I pick her up.
And she sleeps
When I lay her down.
KURT enters with a towel. Doing his morning exercises.
KURT: ‘My head is wet with dew,
My locks with the drops of the night.’
Why am I the one to have a dream about Axis? I’m too busy. But someone has to lie her down and do it. That way she would learn. Someone has to make the world safe. She’ll have my sister—do you know how close I was to my sister? —parade around the court, demanding rights. Rights! The filthy, sanctimonious, demonstrating lesos.
MIRIAM: [referring to the baby] She looks like you, darling. Don’t you think?
KURT: Of course, sweetheart. But she’s got your chin, God help her.
Pause.
My colleagues trust me. Damn it! I won’t have my reputation diminished by deviants dragging my sister into their clitoral insurgency.
MIRIAM: Don’t swear, Kurt, she’ll hear you.
KURT: Daddy’s ittie girl. Sleeping.
‘Your eyes are doves
Behind your veil.’
I’m not going to let Alabastar down.
MIRIAM: Little fingers curled like warm shells.
KURT: ‘Round and round the garden
Chased the teddy bear …’
When he gets in his bookcase Sylvester might look like a Marxist but he and Louise are thoroughly decent people.
MIRIAM: I know, I know, Louise is perfect. But can’t you worry about them some other time? A baby is forever, yet, when you have one, it only lasts a little while.
‘Rock a-bye baby
In the tree top …’
KURT: Will you ring Theenie up? See if she can be reasonable. Tell her it’s in the boy’s best interests if she hands him over quietly without the messy business of a court case.
MIRIAM: ‘… When the wind blows …’
KURT: I’ve got it! Invite her to the christening.
MIRIAM: She has to be there, silly, she’s the star performer.
‘… The cradle will rock …’
Look, she’s smiling.
KURT: Darling, at that age it’s wind.
He sighs.
I’m discussing Theenie, Auntie perilous Theenie.
MIRIAM: Theen and Axis sent this hand-crocheted shawl. And don’t you swear. Feel how soft it is.
The shawl drops open to reveal a women’s symbol worked into the cloth.
KURT: Good God, look at it. I warned you. The moment you have anything to do with them, they start hostilities.
MIRIAM: You forget, they grow so fast, this milk-warm baby smell.
KURT: Nothing matters to you, does it? Can you take time out to listen to me, Miriam? Freedom has to be fought for, it’s very fragile. A red flag—
MIRIAM: ‘It’s very fragile. A red flag waver can come and break it, like that.’
She waves a squeaky toy in front of the baby.
Look, there’s Daddy. Daddy!
KURT: Don’t mock me, dear. Give me that.
He grabs the toy.
Do you think I’m working day and night simply for what you and I can get out of it?
MIRIAM: Don’t you raise your voice at me, Kurt, I’m a nursing mother.
KURT: If I didn’t care about Australia I’d have sold out years ago. We could have bought an island in the South Pacific for a song and let this country go to the bitches.
MIRIAM: You’re frightening her.
KURT: [taking the baby] There!
MIRIAM: Careful, Kurt.
KURT: I’ll be careful.
MIRIAM: Careful. Don’t you have to go in to work?
KURT: Miriam. There are moments when I almost wish I was you. I could forget about everything. Oh Gawd. [To the baby] Are you puking? All right. I’m sorry. I’ll fix it. Where do you keep the cloth?
MIRIAM: Baby! [Taking the baby] If you knew how it makes me tired.
KURT: How it makes you tired!
MIRIAM: [as she leaves, singing] ‘When the bough breaks
The cradle will fall,
And down will come baby,
Cradle and all.’
KURT changes lights with a karate gesture and leaves.
SCENE SEVEN
Back at the hotel. AXIS enters.
AXIS: Where is she? It’s nearly dark. She wanted me to hold her and I had to run away.
VANDELOPE enters with a billiard cue.
Where is she?
VANDELOPE: I bet she’s at the Paragon, knocking herself off with scones, jam and cream.
She plays billiards.
AXIS: Vandelope, we just came from there. What if they wandered off the track?
VANDELOPE: She’s probably stopped somewhere to do a rock carving. So much for your decadent weekend.
AXIS: She was driving me round the twist. ‘We need to get away’, I say, ‘of course Alabastar can come’—there’s no escaping kids—and she accuses me of hating him.
VANDELOPE: She’s gotta put that Alabastar in a big basket and dump it on his dad’s doorstep.
AXIS: He’s not a bloody
cross-eyed kitten.
VANDELOPE: Sylvester can cope. Their house is air-conditioned.
AXIS: Vandelope, it’s taken me a while, but when you live in a house with a kid, their friends come and visit, they talk to you, and you get fond of them.
VANDELOPE: It’s your go. Axis, love, you’re holding it like a toothpick.
AXIS plays.
AXIS: The table won’t keep still. She knows the bush, I know she knows the bush.
VANDELOPE: This isn’t a game, it’s a nervous breakdown.
AXIS: Last week she ripped the knife through her big canvas; that’s why we came up here.
VANDELOPE: I can see it’s bad; it’s in your eyes.
AXIS: Why can’t she see that?
VANDELOPE: Have you given her the chance?
AXIS: We hardly see each other anymore. I’m either at the clinic or barmaiding. If we have to go through the courts to keep the kid, there’ll be all those illegal fees, thousands. Theenie doesn’t realise. I feel like I’ll get punished whatever I do.
VANDELOPE: [holding AXIS] There’s the world out there to get angry with and we keep turning the knives on ourselves.
THEENIE: [off] You’d better run upstairs, Alabastar, and get some dry clothes.
VANDELOPE: Wouldn’t you know it? Right on dinner time.
THEENIE enters.
THEENIE: I thought you’d caught the train.
AXIS: I haven’t, have I?
AXIS and THEENIE embrace.
VANDELOPE: Well, you didn’t think I’d let you two bust up, did you?
AXIS: Hours. Hours and hours.
THEENIE: The wattle was in flower.
VANDELOPE: Well, I come up to the mountains for fresh air and a cappuccino, and there’s Axis, staring into her cup of froth at the Paragon—Well, that was a fortuitous conjunction of the charts, wasn’t it? Half the ghetto turns up, into the waffles, polishing off with a little bushwalk round the cliffs.
THEENIE: We saw the lyrebird.
AXIS: Did you?
THEENIE: She came out of the bush in front of us …
VANDELOPE: Some people have all the fun.
THEENIE: She fluffed her wings like an old woman gathering her skirts and ran, ran on her skinny legs down the track and disappeared.
AXIS: I wish I’d been there.
THEENIE: So do I. I was okay in the bush. I walk out of the tree ferns and the world’s still everywhere.
VANDELOPE: I’m going to put my butt in, even if it gives you the shits. It doesn’t matter where he lives from now on.
THEENIE: Don’t you start driving me mad.
She turns to go.
AXIS: Come back. Theenie. We’ve got to work it out.
VANDELOPE: Let me finish. Theenie, they’ll stick the kid in an old school tie, keep his vowels open, and try and teach him to despise us. But he won’t turn out like them. He’s been with you, he’s got your sensitive world with him in here—
She indicates her head.
—And in here—
Her heart.
—And he’s missed out on one or two of the cockfights that usually come with the balls.
THEENIE: You mean he’s not a macho pig after all, and I still have to give him up?
VANDELOPE: But it’s safe to let go of him; he doesn’t throw beer cans at lyrebirds. Sure, he’ll love life with the upwardly mobile, until he realises he has to swap honesty for knives and forks.
AXIS: He’ll tell them where to stick it. And when he’s older, he’ll rebel and marry a feminist.
VANDELOPE: With a bit of luck he’ll just live with him.
THEENIE: I don’t care what fancy reasons you think up and I don’t care if he grows cloven hoofs as well as a tail, he’s my kid.
VANDELOPE: I know it’s hard, but are you and Axis going to ruin your lives and alienate your friends just to save Alabastar from the nuclear family?
THEENIE: I love him and I’ll be as emotional and irrational as I like, and I won’t let anyone take him away, whether they attack from the right, or they attack from the left. And everyone screaming at me, ‘It’s for your own good, you understand, and we’re sure it’s in the best interests of the child’.
She leaves.
AXIS: How come a touch of honest feminism goes down like poison?
VANDELOPE: I meant it as an antidote. Run after her, tell her I didn’t understand she was struck on him. Tell her I’ll help. We’ll raise the money and fight.
AXIS: Thanks. Wish me luck.
She leaves.
VANDELOPE: We could do with a good campaign. We’re down on morale.
She leaves.
END OF ACT ONE
ACT TWO
* * *
SCENE ONE
Lights dim. A street very late at night outside SYLVESTER’s house. ‘LESBIAN M’ has been painted on the wall. Car passing close. Headlights sweep by. VANDELOPE and AXIS hide. They have a torch, and AXIS has a pot of paint and a brush.
VANDELOPE: They’ve gone.
AXIS: A taxi, fuck it. He’ll have a radio.
VANDELOPE: Did he see us?
AXIS: Dunno. Got three more letters.
AXIS paints on the wall by torchlight: ‘UMS’. Sounds of a police siren, car.
VANDELOPE: Pigs! We can get through those bushes and over the fence.
AXIS: They’ve got a sausage dog called Yappy.
VANDELOPE: They would have.
VANDELOPE and AXIS hide.
SERGEANT: [off] Mongrels!
Dog barks. The car drives away. Siren fades. Street lights on AXIS and VANDELOPE. They give one another a victory sign and a hug.
VANDELOPE: [shining her torch on the graffiti] You little ripper.
VANDELOPE and AXIS exit.
SCENE TWO
Daylight outside SYLVESTER and LOUISE’s house. The graffiti on the wall is now visible: ‘LESBIAN MUMS’. SYLVESTER and KURT enter.
SYLVESTER: [indicating the graffiti] There.
KURT: Barbarians! On your own property. I’ve rung the papers. If she’s forcing this case to court you’ll need evidence of this infantile smearing.
SYLVESTER: Will you give me a moment to think? There has to be a rational way to give Alabastar the stability he needs. How did Theenie get mixed up in this idiotic extremism? We used to sit up for hours talking philosophy. Well, she’s not going to make me guilty because I earn enough to buy this house. Alabastar likes it here. He’s my son and I want him here, he’s a great little person.
KURT: Inform her officially you’re not sending Alabastar back, and if she doesn’t call off this … war, you’ll inform her employer she’s a lesbian.
SYLVESTER: She’s freelance. Your publicity will double the price of her paintings.
KURT: Freelance! You can establish in court that she doesn’t have a steady income.
SYLVESTER: Will you lay off?
KURT: I’ve got it. Does Axis work? Get onto her boss. The top man.
SYLVESTER: She works at the Women’s Clinic.
KURT: How promiscuous are they? You can prove it isn’t a stable relationship.
Pause.
Family! That’s it. Say you’ll spill the beans. The impenetrable Axis must have a mother and a father.
SYLVESTER: My God. Can’t you base your arguments on a modicum of good taste?
KURT: Don’t shrug your self-righteous shoulders at me, Syl old boy, I didn’t scribble on your wall.
LOUISE enters with a tray of coffee things.
KURT: Ah, Louise.
‘Let me hear your voice,
For your voice is sweet
And your face is comely.’
LOUISE: Why, Kurt! You’re such a funny, gallant man.
KURT: The age of chivalry is not dead, and is that the flower of pregnancy blooming on your cheeks?
LOUISE: Oh, you! Lucky you and Miriam.
KURT: [offering LOUISE a chair] I am at your service any time.
Kisses her hand.
‘O that you would kiss me
With the kisses of your mouth!
For your love is better than wine.’
LOUISE pours coffee:
LOUISE: Milk?
KURT: I’ll have my women white, and my coffee black.
SYLVESTER: Let’s have some semblance of respect for humanity.
KURT: Haven’t you married delectable milk-white skin? Humanity will lose you Alabastar.
SYLVESTER: God knows why I ever let you interfere in what was a very convenient arrangement between Theenie and myself.
LOUISE: Dearest love, that wasn’t working, you said that yourself—a month here with us, a month in that commune, the poor boy didn’t know whether he was Arthur or Martha. He’s nearly a teenager, he needs a routine. And look at our house. Just when the sauna arrives, she attacks us.
SYLVESTER: You don’t think, darling, we provoked her, by keeping him here. It is her month.
LOUISE: Suppose I walk over here and stand in her shoes and there’s her precious Alabastar on the other side of the wall. It looks like we kidnapped him. So she turns us into capitalist monsters whose house should be ruined. He wants to stay here. I thought we were doing the best we could for him sending him to Bedlingham Grammar, but if she thinks he’s going to be happy mucking around way below his ability in an ordinary state school for the sake of her revolutionary principles, then I give up. I’m sorry. He needs the guidance. Violin and homework, and then he can play pinball.
KURT: Play! He should be making them.
SYLVESTER: You have overdrawn my patience.
KURT: That’s where we’re steering Matthew—computers.
LOUISE: Alabastar’s artistic. Can’t you see him in the Senate?
SYLVESTER: I wish I could give Alabastar life on a Mozart record. He was asking this morning when he was going to see his other mother—both of them. I want him to be happy, but so in her own strange way does Theenie.
LOUISE: Well, you’ll be pleased to know we had a phone call from the Undone Graffiti Company. Don’t look so worried. They specialise in sandstock bricks.
SYLVESTER: Cross your fingers they get here ahead of the press.
He leaves, taking the coffee tray.
KURT: ‘O fairest among women …’
You’re the only woman I can talk to. Miriam won’t listen. You can feel free to talk to me. I know you’re worried and I want to help. He’s your boy now. What’s on your mind?
LOUISE: I’m doing everything I can for Sylvester.
KURT: Do you think he’s descended into apathy, or downright complicity?
